Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

The Russian Federation, with its plans to regain influence over former Soviet bloc countries, currently constitutes the main military danger for the EU and NATO. Because the war is so close to the EU’s borders, European allies have every reason to increase army financing instead of fuelling a transatlantic disagreement about burden sharing. This article deals with the question of whether the high strategic threat posed by Russia has increased military spending among European allies and decreased free-riding practices after 2014. To analyse this problem, we applied Spearman’s Rank Correlation test and then made a comparative analysis of 21 countries that are both EU and NATO members. Our results confirmed that European allies did not react in the same way to the Russian threat. We proved that strategic factors played a key role in the majority of Eastern European members of NATO, but not across Western European allies.

This study aims to examine the effect of intellectual capital on firm value through corporate reputation as a mediating variable. Intellectual capital is proxied by human capital, structural capital, and customer capital. Using the resource-based theory and signaling theory, this paper analyzes how the corporate reputation will be mediating intellectual capital to firm value. This study used 340 observations of companies that received an excellent category on the Indonesian Corporate Image Award (IMAC) which was listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2013 to 2017 with Partial Least Square (PLS) test processed with warpPLS version 5.0 software. This study shows that the first human capital, structural capital, customer capital, and corporate reputation have a significant effect on firm value. Second, structural capital has a significant effect on corporate reputation. Third, corporate reputation variables are able to mediate the influence of intellectual capital proxied by human capital, structural capital, and customer capital on firm value. This study is the first empirical investigation on the contribution of Intellectual Capital in generating value for corporate reputation. Furthermore, the study contributes to the literature on the link between Intellectual Capital and firm value by examining a sample of firms no yet explored in prior research and this study also uses the cost-based approach.

The purpose of this article is to fulfil a comparative study of national security legislation, as well as the formation of conceptual foundation for its development and the elaboration of proposals for the improvement thereof with regard to Ukraine. The article analyses in comparative aspect the practice of the Republic of Lithuania as one of the European countries. In the context of globalization, the research focuses on international legal systems of both international and regional levels. The comparative legal analysis of the legal measures to maintain national security revealed similarities in theoretical and methodological approaches. In the study, the author’s definition of national security is given; and a typological model of the concept of national security is formed.

The articles analyses the penetration of social media through personal use into daily life and the relation of this phenomenon to national security. A survey of Lithuanian higher-school students aged 18-29 was conducted according to quantitative research methodology. Young people actively use social networks for various purposes (personal, learning, work, recreation). Statistically, each individual, aged 18-29, has personal profiles on four social networking sites, yet most often does not adequately evaluate and link the use of social networks with possible national security threats and risk factors. Less than two-thirds of young people have heard something of possible threats and risk factors; however, the impact of social media on national security is not considered significant. Thus, it seems that young people lack information about real threats presented by social networks to both personal data storage and national security.

International migration has become a key challenge and concern in the European Union (EU) and most part of the word. On the one hand, the freedom to move to another Member State is the right guaranteed for all the EU citizens. On the other hand, emigration or immigration is a longstanding concern for policy makers in many countries. Generally, human capital is one of the future sustainable competitiveness resources. Moreover, now, as the Lisbon Strategy is being replaced by the new EU strategy Europe 2020 for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (2010), there is evidence that mobility in the EU will increase. In order to achieve the goals of the strategy Europe 2020 (2010), especially employment target, the flagship initiative “Youth on the Move” places a lot of emphasis on mobility as in moving to another country to study, train or work. The perceptions of this research show that growing mobility can be followed with new migration trends in the future. Moreover, no single answer to the question what level of migration (emigration or immigration) should be tolerated in the context of sustainable developing economy could be provided. This research not only confirms this observation and theoretical problem of “sustainable migration” but goes much further by discussing the reasons why one of the highest emigration rates in the EU happened to be found in Lithuania.